z by bob mayer
DESCRIPTION
Now a civilian security specialist hired to protect Satellite News Network correspondent Conner Young, the ex-Special Forces warrant officer accompanies his comely charge to Angola, where she's covering a multinational mission to end the civil strife that's racked the onetime Portuguese colony since it gained independence in 1975. After overrunning rebel strongholds and establishing a base camp along the Zairean border, the Green Berets in the UN's vanguard are stopped cold by the outbreak of a virulent plague. Quarantined with Conner and a handful of soldiers who have also been exposed to whatever's in the air, Dave apprehensively follows the unavailing attempts of epidemiologists who have been flown in from the States to deal with the highly contagious disease they refer to as ``Z.'' ... Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.TRANSCRIPT
Z
The Green Berets Series Book Six
by
Bob Mayer
Prologue
Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, 21 May
Eight hundred feet underground, the monotony of watching computer
screens was broken by one of the six men on duty calling out to the shift
commander: “Sir, we’ve got a break in orbit on a known.”
The Warning Center watch officer, Major Sinclair, looked up from his
computer chess game. “Whose is it?”
“Code is RG-fourteen,” the screen watcher replied.
The code told Sinclair several things: The R meant it was Russian. The G
represented the year the object went into space, and since it was the seventh
letter in the alphabet that meant it had been launched this year. The 14 indicated
it was the fourteenth object launched into space by the Russians since January 1.
“That’s very current,” Sinclair commented. “What’s the break? New orbit?”
“No, sir. It’s a decay. She’s coming down.”
“Damn,” Sinclair muttered. “How long before she reenters?” he asked as he
figured out who to call and how soon he would have to call. He hoped they
would have a couple of days before reentry so he could just log it and let the
center’s operations officer take care of the situation during normal duty hours.
The screen watcher hit the keys on his computer, then whistled. “Twelve
minutes.”
Sinclair almost spilled his coffee. “What?”
“Twelve minutes, give or take twenty percent. It’s decaying rapidly,” the
man added in a bit of an understatement.
“Put it on the big screen,” Sinclair ordered. The large screen in front of the
room displayed a Mercator conformal map of the entire world’s surface. With a
few commands, the data that was being downloaded from Defense Support
Program (DSP) could be selectively displayed on the screen. A glowing dot
appeared on the screen moving from left to right across the South Atlantic.
The U.S. Space Command’s Missile Warning Center is located deep inside
Cheyenne Mountain on the outskirts of Colorado Springs. The Space Command,
part of the air force, is responsible for the DSP satellite system.
DSP satellites blanket the entire surface of the earth from an altitude of over
twenty thousand miles up in geosynchronous orbits. The system had originally
been developed to detect ICBM launches during the Cold War. During the Gulf
War, it had picked up every SCUD missile launch and proved so effective that
the military had further streamlined the system to give real-time warnings to
local commanders at the tactical level.
Every three seconds the DSP system downloads an infrared map of the
earth’s surface and surrounding airspace. Most of the data is stored on tape in
the Warning Center, unless, of course, the computer detects a missile launch, or
something different happens to one of the objects already in space that the
Warning Center was tracking.
The staff at Space Command delineates four categories of objects in space.
The first is a known object in stable orbit, such as a satellite or some of the debris
from previous space missions. Each of those has a special code assigned to it, and
its data is stored in the computer at Cheyenne Mountain. There are presently
over eight thousand five hundred catalogued items orbiting the planet.
The second category is a known object whose orbit has changed, such as
when a country or corporation decides to reposition one of its satellites. The third
is a known object whose orbit is decaying. When that happens Space Command
puts the tracking and impact prediction (TIP) team on the job to figure out where
it will come down. TIP teams were instituted as a result of the publicity after
Skylab came down years ago. The fourth category is an object that has just been
launched and has yet to be assigned a code.
The man who had first picked up the discrepancy explained the movement.
“She’s running roughly east-west along about ten degrees south latitude.”
“Do you have an impact point?”
“Computer’s working on it, sir.”
Hell, Sinclair thought, by the time the computer figured it out, the thing
would be down. He got out of his chess game and entered the code for the object.
The entry on his screen was very short.
RG14: Proton final stage booster.
Orbit: Free, plotted, and logged.
Launch: 18 May 1997
Launch Site: Kazakhstan
Comments: Final stage booster for Proton launch of communications
satellite contracted out to SINCOM, European
Communications. Payload is listed as EG36.
The dot was simply the last stage of a Russian Proton booster rocket, which
was some relief to Sinclair. At least it wasn’t a nuclear power source, of which he
knew the Soviets had several in space giving juice to their space lab and some of
their satellites. If one of those started coming down, there’d be hell to pay. The
fact that a Russian rocket had put a European satellite into orbit was not strange
at all. The Russians were so strapped for cash that they had begun putting their
space program up for hire several years previously. The booster itself was
garbage and of no concern, unless of course it landed on someone’s roof.
“Why’s it deteriorating so fast?” Sinclair asked out loud.
The man who had first spotted the decay was just as confused. “I don’t
know, sir. It shouldn’t be deteriorating at all. Those Proton final stage boosters
usually stay up there for quite a while before they go down the gravity well.”
“Could the Russians be bringing it down?” Sinclair asked.
“No, sir. According to our data on the Proton booster, it’s dead weight. No
thrusters.”
“Dead weight doesn’t decay its own orbit and defy the law of gravity,”
Sinclair remarked. “Maybe they’re trying to recover it to use it again.”
“They wouldn’t be bringing it down at that latitude,” the man said. “And
they’ve never brought one down before.”
They continued to watch as the small dot moved across the ocean.
“She’s coming down somewhere in Africa,” the man said as his computer
finally yielded its projection. “Maybe Zaire.”
The dot touched the western shore of Africa. It started across Angola, then
suddenly disappeared just short of the border between that state and its neighbor
Zaire.
“She’s down.”
“Put a lock on the tape,” Sinclair ordered. The center recorded everything
that the GPS satellites picked up. The lock would ensure that the tape with this
particular action would not be reused. Due to budget cuts, they were starting to
reuse old tapes that had nothing of significance on them.
“At least it didn’t strike a city,” the screen watcher joked. “Maybe some
farmer just saw what he thinks is a meteorite.”
“It probably just hit jungle,” Sinclair said, noting the location where the dot
had disappeared: on the edge of the Congo basin. The heart of darkness in the
title of Conrad’s novel. Better Africa than North America, Sinclair thought.
As things settled back down, Sinclair stared at the screen at the front of the
room and the traces of the political borders in Central Africa that were on it.
Something wasn’t right about this. Like he had said, the booster should not have
come down that fast, if at all. A normal gravitational decay usually occurred over
the course of several weeks to months to years, depending on the height of the
orbit and the object’s velocity, yet this thing had come down less than fifteen
minutes from the first change in orbit being noticed. Maybe the booster had hit
something, Sinclair reasoned. There certainly was enough debris floating around
in orbit. But that didn’t sit right either.
Sinclair shrugged and entered one line in his duty log concerning the event.
He noted the date and time group for the computer tape of the incident. Then he
turned his computer game back on.
Chapter 1
Angola, 9 June
“What do you think?” the corporal driving the truck asked Sergeant Ku. The
patrol was deep inside rebel territory and the men were very nervous. Ku knew
Lieutenant Monoko, out front in the jeep, didn’t want to admit that he didn’t
know how deep inside rebel territory they were.
They’d traveled for six hours over unpaved roads and trails since leaving
the paved main road between the border post at Luau and Luena, the next major
town on the road. Sergeant Ku had watched the sun the entire time, troubled
about the direction it told him they were traveling.
“I think the lieutenant does not know where we are,” Ku said. He was in the
cab of the half-ton diesel truck with the corporal driving. The rest of the patrol—
twelve men—was in the back. Ku was an old veteran of the civil war in Angola,
having fought the Portuguese at the start, then beside the Cubans many years
back. The allies and enemies had changed over the years but never the fighting.
Ku’s dark scalp was covered with gray hair and his slight frame was tense, ready
for action.
They could see Lieutenant Monoko ahead in the jeep, looking at his map
and scratching his head. The fact that the lieutenant’s vehicle was out in front
told the sergeant more than he wished to know about his new officer. Only a fool
would want to be in the lead to trip whatever mines the UNITA rebels might
have planted on the road. Of course, Ku’s sense of self-preservation made him
very grateful that in this specific area the lieutenant was ignorant. If Monoko had
done as he should have and made the truck lead, the sergeant would not be
sitting in this cab—he’d be in the backseat of the jeep with the lieutenant.
Ku climbed out of the truck and walked forward. This was their first chance
in several hours to stop, and he indicated for the soldiers to take a break. Some
were already urinating off the side of the truck. Ku snapped a salute, startling
Monoko. “Sir, may I be of assistance?” The lieutenant was a very large and fat
man, used to the easy life of the city. Ku wondered what circumstances had
forced him into uniform and out to the bush.
Ku watched with detached amusement at the emotions that played across
the broad black plain of his officer’s face. Pride versus the reality of the situation.
The amusement disappeared quickly, though, because the look on Monoko’s face
also confirmed what Ku had been fearing. They were indeed lost.
“I believe we are near Cangamba,” Monoko said, vaguely stabbing his
finger at the map.
Years of working with incompetence allowed Ku to keep his face
expressionless. “Sir, we have been heading to the northwest all afternoon. We
cannot be close to Cangamba.”
“We have been traveling southwest,” Monoko disagreed. He reached into
his pocket and pulled out a compass, flipping open the plastic cover proudly.
There was no amusement left at all in Ku. “Sir, we never stopped to take
compass bearings. How do—”
“I was checking all along,” Monoko interrupted. “I can read a compass on
the move. I do not need to stop.”
Ku held out his hand. Monoko paused, then gave him the compass. “Sir, if
you note, the compass now says north is that way”—he pointed to the right side
of the road. Ku turned and walked several paces from the jeep. Monoko
reluctantly got out of the jeep and followed. “If you would please note, sir, the
compass now says north is that way.” Ku pointed to the left.
Monoko blinked. “But how can that be? It is not supposed to do that!”
Ku bit the inside of his mouth to restrain himself. “Sir, the metal of the jeep
affects the magnet in the needle. That is why we must stop to get compass
readings away from the jeep or navigate off the direction the sun speaks.” Ku
pointed up.
Ku felt sick with himself for having allowed the officer to proceed in
ignorance for so long. But it was Monoko’s fault also, Ku reminded himself. Not
only did the lieutenant not know how to use a compass properly, he had never
told Ku what their orders were or where they were headed. Ku had assumed that
they were going in the right direction, even if it was in the direction of the
enemy. After all, they occasionally did have to go out and fight. Who knew what
the idiots in charge in Luanda had thought up? Ku had been hearing rumors for
weeks now that something big was getting ready to happen, and he had
assumed this strange direction was tied to those rumors.
Monoko looked about at the undulating grasslands that surrounded them.
He turned back to his platoon sergeant. “What do we do?”
“Let me see your map, sir.” Ku took the sheet and stared at it. He found the
last point where he had positively known where they were, then estimated.
They’d been traveling for over five hours since then, mostly north and west. He
placed an aged finger on the paper and traced a forty-kilometer circle just south
of a town named Saurimo. “We are somewhere here. We must head due west as
quickly as possible to get out of rebel territory before nightfall. I know for certain
that there are many rebels in Saurimo.”
The last thing Ku wanted was to spend the night in this province with a
green officer and a platoon full of new recruits. They were on the edge of Lunda
Sul, a diamond-rich area that made up northeast Angola and was completely in
rebel hands. There was a government garrison at Cacolo, about one hundred
kilometers away. With a little luck and good roads, they might make it before
dark.
Monoko pulled himself together. “Yes. We must head west. Tell the men we
must be moving.”
Ku yelled out the appropriate orders, then made a difficult personal
decision. “Sir, might I join you in your vehicle?”
A half hour later, they turned a corner in the road and the driver hit the
brakes. Ku reacted instinctively to the tangle of fallen trees that blocked the road
ahead. He rolled out of the backseat and took cover behind the jeep, pointing his
weapon ahead, searching for the ambush he expected to explode out of the
foliage all around as he screamed for the men in the truck to deploy.
The men reacted slowly, but eventually all were on the ground in the
semblance of a perimeter and Lieutenant Monoko was at his side, peering ahead.
“What do you think?” the officer whispered.
If there were any rebels about, there was no doubt in Ku’s mind that the
patrol’s presence had been detected and whispering was not needed, but he
played along. “I do not know, sir.” He peered at the trees. They’d been hacked
down and pulled across the road. Beyond he could see some smoke, maybe from
cooking fires. There was a small patch of thatched roof visible above the fallen
trees. “There is a village there.” It was a logical location for a village: they were in
low terrain and a river ran to their left.
“A rebel village?” Lieutenant Monoko asked.
This was rebel territory, but most of the villages Ku had encountered over
the years were on neither side in this bloody civil war. The inhabitants probably
wanted to just be left alone. But Ku needed to get through the village to continue
on to the west. There was most likely a crossing site for the river on the far side
of the village. “I will look, sir.”
He stood and signaled for a couple of men to accompany him. He walked
up to the roadblock and checked it for booby traps. Nothing. He went around the
tangled limbs and looked. A small village of about ten or twelve huts was in a
clearing on the gentle bank that led down to the river. There was no one moving
about. A pile of smoldering logs on the right side of the village was the source of
the smoke. There were also the remains of several huts that had been burned to
the ground.
Ku frowned. The road was blocked on the far side also, and beyond it he
could see a ford across the small river. What had the villagers wanted to stop?
And where were they? Who had destroyed the huts?
He ordered his men to stay put and went forward. Then he caught a scent in
the air and stopped in midstep. He recognized the horrible smell from past
battles: burning flesh. Ku turned and looked more closely at the pile of logs and
now saw that they weren’t wood. They were bodies, tightly wrapped in soiled
sheets, piled four deep.
“Remove the roadblocks!” he yelled at his men. “Quickly!”
Ku went to the first hut and used the muzzle of his AK-47 to push aside the
cloth that hung in the doorway. The stench that greeted his nostrils was even
worse than the burning flesh. The walls were spattered with blood. There was
something that might have once been human lying on the floor, but the body had
been destroyed by some terrible force.
Ku had seen many bodies in his service, but this one did not look like it had
been killed by an explosion. However, that was the only thing he could think of
that would cause the mangled flesh and the amount of blood splattered all
around the interior.
Ku moved to the next hut, but paused as he heard Lieutenant Monoko’s
voice. “What is going on, Sergeant?”
“I do not know, sir. I have ordered the men to clear the roadblocks. We can
proceed across the river when that is done.”
Monoko wrinkled his nose. “What is that stink?”
Ku pointed. “Bodies. Burning.”
The lieutenant’s eyes widened. “What has happened here?”
Ku felt fear now, an icy trickle running down his spine and curling into his
stomach. He pulled aside the curtain to the next hut with the steel of his rifle
barrel.
Monoko cried out and turned away. Ku heard his officer vomiting as he
stared at the sight that had greeted both of them. A woman was on a dilapidated
mattress, her legs spread wide. Between her legs was an aborted fetus. At least
that’s what Ku hoped it was. All he could see was a pile of dark black blood and
putrid flesh. The mother was dead also. Ku forced himself to stare and take note.
Blood had poured out of the woman. Not just from between her legs but from
her eyeballs, her nostrils, her ears, her mouth, every opening. The rags she had
wrapped herself in were soaked with red as if she had even sweated blood. Skin
that wasn’t covered in blood had angry red welts crisscrossing it.
Ku finally turned away. Monoko was on his knees, still retching. Ku
grabbed his arm. “We must go, sir! Now!”
Ku looked about. The men had figured out what the burned pile was. That
was evident from the amount of effort they were putting into clearing away the
trees. The first roadblock was clear and the second halfway done.
“We must look for survivors,” Monoko whispered.
Ku shook his head. “There are none, sir.”
“We must check all the huts.”
Ku frowned. “All right. I will do it. Move the jeep and truck forward. We
must leave as soon as the trees are clear.”
Ku quickly ran to the next hut. It was empty. The next four held bodies, or
what had once been bodies, but were now just masses of rotting flesh and blood.
In the next-to-last hut, there was a person lying on the floor. A young woman.
She turned her head as Ku opened the curtain. Her eyes were wide and red, a
trickle of blood rolling like tears down her cheeks. Her skin was covered with red
welts.
“Please!” she rasped. “Help me.”
Ku stepped in, every nerve in his body screaming for him to run away. He
knelt next to the woman. Her face was swollen and her breathing was coming in
labored gasps. From the smell, there was no doubt she was lying in her own
feces.
Suddenly the woman’s hands darted forward and she grabbed the collar of
Ku’s fatigue jacket. With amazing strength she half-pulled herself off the fouled
mat, toward Ku’s face. Her mouth opened as if she were going to speak, but a
tide of black-red matter exploded out of her mouth into Ku’s face and chest. He
screamed and slammed his arms up, but couldn’t break her grip. Struggling to
his feet, he moved backward to the door, but the woman was still attached to
him.
He jammed the muzzle of his AK-47 into her stomach and pulled the
trigger. The steel-jacketed rounds literally tore the woman in half, but even in
death her hands held on. Ku threw his gun out the door, then pulled his
bloodied shirt up and over his head and left it there, clutched in her dead fingers.
He staggered out into the clearing as soldiers ran over, weapons at the
ready. “We go!” Ku screamed at them as he wiped at the blood and vomit on his
face. “We go!”
End of Excerpt
Purchase your copy at these outlets:
Next in the Green Beret Series Book Seven
Chasing the Ghost
About the Author
NY Times bestselling author Bob Mayer has had over 50 books published. He has
sold over four million books, and is in demand as a team-building, life-changing, and
leadership speaker and consultant for his Who Dares Wins: The Green Beret Way concept,
which he translated into Write It Forward: a holistic program teaching writers how to be
authors. He is also the Co-Creator of Cool Gus Publishing, which does both eBooks and Print
On Demand, so he has experience in both traditional and non-traditional publishing.
His books have hit the NY Times, Publishers Weekly, Wall Street Journal and
numerous other bestseller lists. His book The Jefferson Allegiance, was released
independently and reached #2 overall in sales on Nook.
Bob Mayer grew up in the Bronx. After high school, he entered West Point where he
learned about the history of our military and our country. During his four years at the
Academy and later in the Infantry, Mayer questioned the idea of “mission over men.” When
he volunteered and passed selection for the Special Forces as a Green Beret, he felt more at
ease where the men were more important than the mission.
Mayer’s obsession with mythology and his vast knowledge of the military and
Special Forces, mixed with his strong desire to learn from history, is the foundation for his
science fiction series Atlantis, Area 51 and Psychic Warrior. Mayer is a master at blending
elements of truth into all of his thrillers, leaving the reader questioning what is real and
what isn’t.
He took this same passion and created thrillers based in fact and riddled with
possibilities. His unique background in the Special Forces gives the reader a sense of
authenticity and creates a reality that makes the reader wonder where fact ends and fiction
begins.
In his historical fiction novels, Mayer blends actual events with fictional characters.
He doesn’t change history, but instead changes how history came into being.
Mayer’s military background, coupled with his deep desire to understand the past
and how it affects our future, gives his writing a rich flavor not to be missed.
Bob has presented for over a thousand organizations both in the United States and
internationally, including keynote presentations, all day workshops, and multi-day
seminars. He has taught organizations ranging from Maui Writers, to Whidbey Island
Writers, to San Diego State University, to the University of Georgia, to the Romance Writers
of America National Convention, to Boston SWAT, the CIA, Fortune-500, the Royal Danish
Navy Frogman Corps, Microsoft, Rotary, IT Teams in Silicon Valley and many others. He has
also served as a Visiting Writer for NILA MFA program in Creative Writing. He has done
interviews for the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Sports Illustrated, PBS, NPR, the Discovery
Channel, the SyFy channel and local cable shows. For more information see
www.bobmayer.org.
Copyright
Cool Gus Publishing
http://coolgus.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to
actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.
COPYRIGHT © 2002 by Bob Mayer, Updated 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
without written permission from the author (Bob Mayer and Who Dares Wins
Publishing) except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or
reviews.
Electronic ISBN: 9781935712503